The invention relates to an interface module for a sales processing system and to a system and method using such a module.
It is known that many different sales processing systems are available on the market from various manufacturers. Sales processing systems can be used in many different environments for making and recording purchase transactions. Such sales processing systems can include so-called point of sales (POS) systems or electronic cash registers as used, for example, in restaurants or retail establishments, or so-called property management systems as used, for example in hotels, or payment gateway systems, for example. Such sales processing systems typically integrate with sales processing server systems that are connected to a number of such sales processing server systems. It should be noted that different terminologies used in the sales environment as will be apparent from the above discussion.
The expression or term “sales processing system” as used herein relates to a device, system or apparatus that is responsible for conducting sales in an retail or other sales environment, and is distinct from a payment system or payment terminal that is used to manage payment card (e.g. credit and/or debit card) transactions. A sales processing system is typically arranged to interact with a payment system to effect payments using payment cards. The reason for the separation between the sales processing system and the payment system is to provide security in respect of the payment card transaction. There are many different types of payment systems available on the market. The payment systems are configured to communicate with remote acquiring hosts that provide financial services.
In order to enable sales processing systems and payment systems to work together, it has been necessary to provide specific programming of the sales processing systems and devices to be able to integrate with the payment systems.
An important part of the integration of payment systems with sales processing systems is to provide sufficient separation of the functionality of the respective systems to achieve financial regulatory and security requirements. Providing suitable programming is an expensive and time consuming process.
Also during the operation of such systems, if changes become necessary due, for example, because of a change in the supplier of the financial services from one bank to another, then an expensive and time consuming reprogramming of the sales processing systems becomes necessary. This can be time consuming and expensive, not only because the modification of a single sales processing system can be complex, but also because a company may be using a number of different models and versions of one or more sales processing systems in one or more stores.
In addition, so companies may also wish to provide additional services such as tax free shopping services, or direct currency conversion services using the sales processing systems. In view of this integration with yet further external systems may be needed.
The present invention seeks to at least mitigate at least some of these problems.